Aluminum-framed Eco-friendly Future EV Prototype

The Nihon Automobile College (NATS) introduced Think3 CAD software and was crowned the winner of the "PDP Award Andrea Pininfarina" design competition sponsored by Think3 in Italy. The NATS team then worked tirelessly so that students from the following school year could actually drive the vehicle with the award winning design, and the team exhibited the completed vehicle at the Tokyo Motor Show.

The concept of this project was an eco-friendly, compact, 2-passenger electric sports car. Recognizing that a significant amount of time and money is needed to produce this type of vehicle from scratch, the NATS team fabricated the vehicle based on the Honda Insight.

Q"We designed this model using CAD software and fabricated the original aluminum frame while implementing a certain amount of power analysis. We decided to use an aluminum frame because we had fabricated a lot of vehicles thus far with steel frames but had not fabricated an aluminum frame. We thought that this would be a good opportunity to gain more experience and to challenge the students with something new, so we decided to fabricate an aluminum frame."

Going forward, the team will conduct actual driving tests to check the vehicle's cruising distance and maximum speed.